Cosmic Evolution of Mass Accretion Rate and Metallicity in Active Galactic Nuclei

By H. Netzer, B. Trakhtenbrot. 2006

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present line and continuum measurements for 9818 SDSS type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with z ≤ 0.75. The data are used to study the four-dimensional space of black hole mass, normalized accretion rate (L/LEdd), metallicity, and redshift. The main results are (1) L/LEdd is smaller for larger mass black holes at all redshifts. (2) For a given black hole mass, L/LEdd ∝ zγ or (1 + z)δ, where the slope γ increases with black hole mass. The mean slope is similar to the star formation rate slope over the same redshift interval. (3) The Fe II/Hβ line ratio is significantly correlated with L/LEdd. It also shows a weaker negative dependence on redshift. Combined with the known dependence of metallicity on accretion rate, we suggest that the Fe II/Hβ line ratio is a metallicity indicator. (4) Given the measured accretion rates, the growth times of most AGNs exceed the age of the universe. This suggests past episodes of faster growth for all those sources. Combined with the Fe II/Hβ result, we conclude that the broad emission line metallicity goes through cycles and is not a monotonously decreasing function of redshift. (5) FWHM([O III] λ5007) is a poor proxy for σ*, especially for high L/LEdd. (6) We define a group of narrow-line type 1 AGNs (NLAGN1s) by their luminosity- (or mass-) dependent Hβ line width. Such objects have L/LEdd ≥ 0.25, and they comprise 8% of the type 1 population. Other interesting results include negative Baldwin relationships for EW(Hβ) and EW(Fe II) and a relative increase of the red part of the Hβ line with luminosity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec66fba59ba2f6bfae1d7f6ae4fd97a0ff4dfa7d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. D. Schneider
5. Thomas J. Cox
6. R. Hickox
7. H. Netzer
8. W. N. Brandt

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. D. M. Alexander
4. Thomas J. Cox
5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. R. Dav'e
7. S. Wuyts
8. D. Schneider

Citations in the corpus

• A Systematic Analysis of Fe II Emission in Quasars: Evidence for Inflow to the Central Black Hole (2008, background): “Following Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007) we define RFe as the line luminosity ratio of Fe ii and H BC, RFe ¼ L(Fe ii k4570) L(H BC) ; ð10Þ where L(Fe ii k4570) is the luminosity of Fe ii emission between k4434 and k4684.”
• What drives the growth of black holes (2011, methodology): “…z < 2 quasars (BH masses estimated using the virial estimator; see §4.1) provide further support for this view by showing a decrease in both the characteristic active BH mass and Eddington ratio with decreasing redshift (e.g., McLure & Dunlop, 2004; Greene & Ho, 2007; Netzer & Trakhtenbrot, 2007).”
• Hot graphite dust and the infrared spectral energy distribution of active galactic nuclei (2011, methodology): “For PG 1244+026, PG 1001+054, and PG 0157+001 we used spectra from the seventh data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS/DR7, Abazajian et al. 2009) that were measured in the way described in Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007).”
• THE SDSS-IV EXTENDED BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: QUASAR TARGET SELECTION (2015, background): “…rare types of quasars, and precision studies of the quasar luminosity function (e.g. Vanden Berk et al. 2001; Inada et al. 2003; McLure & Dunlop 2004; Hennawi et al. 2006; Richards et al. 2006; York et al. 2006; Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007; Kaspi et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2008; Boroson & Lauer 2009).”
• Spitzer Quasar and ULIRG Evolution Study (QUEST). II. The Spectral Energy Distributions of Palomar-Green Quasars (2007, background): “Estimates of the bolometric luminosity,Lbol, of unreddened AGNs (e.g. Shemmer et al. 2004; Marconi et al. 2004; Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007) are 5–10 times larger than L(5100).”
• The mean star formation rate of X-ray selected active galaxies and its evolution from z~2.5: results from PEP-Herschel (2012, background): “5 from Maiolino et al. (2007) and taking a ratio of 7 between the luminosity at 5100Å andLAGN (Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007). logLAGN = (logLX − 11.78) 0.721 + 0.845 (1) whereLX (the 2-10 keV band X-ray luminosity) andLAGN are in erg s−1.”
• ANALYSIS OF OPTICAL Fe ii EMISSION IN A SAMPLE OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS SPECTRA (2010, background): “…other hand, no Baldwin effect has been noticed for the optical Fe ii and Hβ lines (Dietrich et al. 2002), or even an inverse Baldwin Effect has been reported: Croom et al. (2002) found an inverse Baldwin effect in Hβ and Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007) found one for both Hβ and optical Fe ii lines.”
• THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: THE QUASAR LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FROM DATA RELEASE NINE (2012, methodology): “…constraints on the formation history of supermassive black holes (e.g., Rees 1984; Madau & Rees 2001; Volonteri et al. 2003; Volonteri & Rees 2006; Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007; Haiman 2012) and to map the black hole accretion history of the Universe via the black hole mass function (Shankar et…”
• Faint high-redshift AGN in the Chandra deep field south: the evolution of the AGN luminosity function and black hole demography (2011, methodology): “At medium to high redshift, we used the distributions of Trakhtenbrot et al. (2011), Shemmer et al. (2004), Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007), and Willott et al. (2010b).”
• Bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei in the XMM-COSMOS survey (2012, methodology): “A trend of increasingλEdd with redshift has also been also found by Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007) using a sample of 9818 SDSS Type 1 AGN atz6 0.75.”
• Accretion-driven evolution of black holes: Eddington ratios, duty cycles and active galaxy fractions (2011, background): “We note that Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007) find a peak at λ ≈ 0.1 for M = 108−108.5M⊙ black holes at z = 0.7.”
• Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. II. Scaling Relations at z = 0.36 (2007, methodology): “After removing the narrow component of H using [O iii] as a template, as described in Treu et al. (2004) and Paper I, wemeasured the FWHM (McGill et al. 2007) and derived black hole mass estimates using equation (1) in Netzer & Trakhtenbrot (2007).”
• On the Nature of Seyfert Galaxies with High [O III] λ5007 Blueshifts (2008, background): “We further find that a correlation between L/LEdd and ∆σ (e.g., Mathur & Grupe 2005, Greene & Ho 2005; see also Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007) is only present in our sample if we include blue outliers; when they are removed from the sample, no correlation remains (last panel of our Fig.”
• CONSTRAINTS ON BLACK HOLE GROWTH, QUASAR LIFETIMES, AND EDDINGTON RATIO DISTRIBUTIONS FROM THE SDSS BROAD-LINE QUASAR BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION (2010, background): “…to estimate the distribution of quasar black hole masses and Eddington ratios at a variety of redshifts (e.g., McLure & Dunlop 2004; Vestergaard 2004; Kollmeier et al. 2006; Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007; Shen et al. 2008; Fine et al. 2008; Kelly et al. 2008; Trump et al. 2009; Labita et al. 2009a).”